The Survival Wisdom of the Beiyang Era (231): Don't take bean bags and improper dry food.
Among the warlords at the level of the Beiyang Warlord Division, the first to strike at Yuan Shikai's prestige was Wang Zhanyuan, commander of the Second Division of the Beiyang Army. In the Battle of Ganning, the Beiyang Army of the Second Division was ordered to garrison Hubei, and Wang Zhanyuan was already like the alternate governor of Hubei, and did not want Yuan Shikai to invite Li Yuanhong to the urn, but was replaced by the red people around the old Yuan, Duan Zhigui, who was known as "Qian Highness", and Wang Zhanyuan was greatly disappointed. Duan Zhigui often went to the capital to move around, and when he ran between Hubei and Beijing, Hubei's military affairs were naturally represented by Wang Zhanyuan, who held real power, and did not want Wang Zhanyuan to look down on this bare-handed superior more and more, Duan Zhigui was also dissatisfied with Wang Zhanyuan's attitude of not respecting the elders, and hubei, the city that had overthrown the Qing court's "first righteousness", was also doomed to be unpeaceful at this time, and a dark tide of real-power warlords expelling the chief was coming.
Subsequently, Duan Zhigui resigned in Beijing because he was dissatisfied with the pressure from his subordinates. Old Yuan naturally could not answer after some thought, Hubei's status was very important, Duan Zhigui was a close confidant, and Wang Zhanyuan did not have the qualifications to be a general, if he was expelled by his subordinates, where would his face go. Old Yuan could only be a peacemaker, and more than once persuaded Duan Zhigui to return to Hubei to continue his post, but each time Wang Zhanyuan's attitude became more and more arrogant. Duan Zhigui once telegraphed Yuan Shikai that Wang Zhanyuan was unreliable, and when Wang Zhanyuan learned of it, he also directly threatened to resign, and how could the powerful generals in the key areas of the north and south let go, and the old Yuan naturally did not dare to approve it, personally pointing out that Major General Fang Yinji went to Hubei to reconcile the relationship between Duan Zhigui and Wang Zhanyuan, and at the same time promoted Wang Zhanyuan to be the military deputy of a province in Hubei.
However, Duan Zhigui finally could not bear it, and in the middle of the four years of Beiyang, Duan Zhigui took the opportunity of going to Beijing to participate in the preparations for the Hongxian Imperial System, once again explained his difficult situation to Yuan Shikai, and proposed to transfer him to Fengtian Province. At this time, Fengtian Province was also staging a dark tide of subordinates expelling their superiors, and the main contradictions were concentrated between zhang Zuolin, a powerful faction, and zhang Xiluan, a superior. Although Zhang Zuolin had a relationship with Zhang Xiluan as a righteous father, as Zhang Zuolin was recruited under Zhang Xiluan and became the commander of the Twenty-seventh Division, as a subordinate, he began to be unwilling to stand in front of his old boss forever, and Zhang Xiluan was also seventy years old, naturally unwilling to look at the faces of his subordinates, and he also asked Yuan Shikai to resign more than once, and Zhang Zuolin continued to act behind his back.
In the end, Zhang Zuolin openly telephoned Duan Qirui, commander-in-chief of the Beiyang Army, saying: "In the battles of Xinhai and Ganning, the great president paid attention to the south, and all of them sat in the power of the north, and today they made up their minds to make up their minds, so that they could be squeezed out by the slanderers, the birds were hidden, the cold hearts of the thoughts were treated with the positions of escorting the army, and such cage means could be used by others, and it was not possible to use them as lin. "The tone of this telegram should be your old Yuan's Jiangshan, our old Zhang also has a lot of strength, you listen to the words of my boss Zhang Xiluan, want to beat me into the cold palace, use empty titles to fool me, I will definitely not agree." After the telegram, there was also the threat of leading the whole division to take free action, which was also Zhang Zuolin's determination that Yuan Shikai did not dare to try it lightly. The dark tide of expelling the governors of the above two provinces is also in Yuan Shikai's seemingly extremely powerful, but in the eyes of the local warlords of real power, he has long been regarded as a paper tiger, so the reason why the Beiyang Dynasty has faltered is naturally related to these self-inflated warlords.